Articulating a vision is one of the most difficult aspects to building a home or planning a remodeling project. For those who are not interior designers or architects, Autodesk Homestyler has come to the rescue. The 3D design software is free, entirely Web-based and easier than hammering a nail.

With Autodesk Homesyler, users can create their dream home from scratch by choosing from a wide range of floor plans and more than 22,000 name-brand products from the product catalog (including Marvin Window and Doors). To kick-start inspiration, users can browse the design gallery to view and tinker with designs made by other users. There’s also a series of advice videos from professional interior designer Nadia Geller.

No more flipping through design magazines and spending hours perusing real estate websites. A mental picture isn’t good enough. Check out Autodesk Homestyler to render your dream project. It just might be the first step toward completion.

Home Décor taught us about different types of color schemes and provided inspiration for a previous blog post, and we’re back to share some tools to help you pick the specific colors to bring your vision to life.

It was helpful to learn about monochromatic, complementary and triadic color schemes in that earlier post, but we’d like to make it even easier to pick the perfect color scheme for your home by sharing the following links:

• Kuler is a downloadable application made by Adobe to help you explore, create and share color schemes. You can even create a color scheme based on an image that you upload from your home or find on the photo-sharing site Flickr.
• ColorJack is a color scheme generator used mostly by Web designers to find the right combinations of colors to use online. It can also be a nifty guide for homeowners, as there are more than 200 different color schemes.
• The Home Know-it-All blog directed us to the Color + Design blog, which had a great post about the palettes created by some of the greatest artists ever. The artists “show a little of how they were inspired by color … or perhaps, how they inspire us with color.” The post shows the color schemes created by famous painters for the signature pieces of art. The post features paintings such as da Vinci’s “The Mona Lisa” and Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”
• Benjamin Moore Paint is also a nice resource for picking color schemes, as it offers several insightful posts on picking color schemes based on moods, nature, room sizes, etc.